THE RANTING BRUMMIE'S VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE

The signs say Valentine's Day is here. Then again they've been saying it as soon as the Christmas cards came off the bloody shelves. Heart-shaped chocolate boxes fill display windows. Dozens of fresh red roses all on special sale. But just what on earth is it about February 14th that makes the heart go wild ?? For all its glamour in support of love, Valentine's Day has few devout lovers of its own, least of all me ...

Back when I was a little kid in school, Valentine’s Day meant a class assembly, pink-frosted fairy cakes and a Looney Tunes card from everyone in the class. Nowadays, Cupid's arrow seems to bring more loath than love. Much of the enthusiasm that one generally associates with Valentine’s Day is lost in the anticipation of knowing exactly what to expect.

Or, as in my case, to dread.

I don't know a sole single guy who remotely likes, or looks forward to, Valentine's Day. If they tell you they're into it, don't believe them, they are lying through every possible facial orifice it is possible to lie out of. Valentine's Day is the yappy-dog-that-fits-in-a-pocket-book of holidays.

If it was a Top Gear presenter, it would be Richard Hammond.

Couples, if nothing else, at least have a set code of conduct for February 14th. Dinner. Gifts. Being extra cute and cuddly. And yet, then the next day, it's back to business as usual ?? It makes one wonder why this single day is supposed to define a relationship as opposed to the other perfectly good 364. And by the way, don’t you people know that there’s an economic recession / credit crunch on ??

However, unless couples can keep the romancing up throughout the entire year, Valentine's Day will last just as long as it takes the roses to wilt or the credit card bill to show up. And all this expense spent despite the fact the classic Valentine's date usually barely extends past the tacky FD Hinds bracelet to the fancy dinner.

For singles, Valentine's Day can do significantly more damage to the heart than good. No other holiday singles unattached people out so deliberately. And disenchanted singles like yours truly have heavily promoted the cause against Valentine's Day for years. One look on the Internet and one often finds hoards of ‘stop-the-sappiness’ commentaries and advertisements for Single's Awareness Day. I should know, of course, because I joined most of them on Facebook back in the day.

The history of Valentine's Day itself is also a vague one - there's more than one story about the martyrdom of St. Valentine, and it seems the only thing that can be agreed upon is that he was a total prat / utter imbecile / complete moron / deluded idiot hopeless romantic.

How Valentine's Day even came to fall on February 14 has its own debate: is February the month of romance; or the anniversary of St. Valentine's death; or was the middle of February a time for purification being it was the beginning of spring in ancient Rome ??

We can't even decide who the hell St. Valentine actually WAS, let alone why in the world February 14 has been labelled his ‘day’, so why in the name of all that is holy has our culture made such a production out of it ??

But, let me see if I actually understand this myth correctly. Sometime around 1,500 years ago there may (or may not) have been a priest or a monk that married soldiers, joined a cult, scared off dogs, and resurrected some dead cherubs. Just what exactly does this have to do with little cloud-dwelling angels firing arrows and stuffed animals holding flowers ??

About as much as "Fifty Shades of Gray" has to do with writing, plot and good fiction. In other words, slightly less than bugger all.

There is no getting away from it; Valentine's Day is just bloody rotten. If someone truly cared about you, I think you'd hear it more often than once a year, presented with a heart shaped cardboard box filled with cheap chocolates made with oils and lard and a recycled card picked up for £1.50 in a petrol station.

And just how did they decide to use this to decree that we singletons are left to spend this day feeling utterly miserable, desperately vulnerable, immensely frustrated, deeply resentful, bitter, lonely, angry, hurt, and helplessly inadequate ?? And for those who are bereaved, lost someone close to them, or have experienced relationship breakdowns, particularly if it is a recent loss, Valentine’s Day can stir up many emotions, some of which can be really distressing.

Certainly for me it does.

But the main reason why I truly dislike Valentine's Day actually isn't because of the cheap cards, the flowers that decide to shrivel up and die within 12 hours or the overpriced heart-shaped-boxed choccies. The world's expensive enough as it, thank you very much.

I don't like Valentine's Day because it has become used as an excuse for us as a species to be utterly lazy with such a crucial and fundamentally important human emotion; love. Love is not an achievement, it's a responsibility, as humans we thrive on shared experiences, in fact, it’s what we’re all about. And Valentine's Day completely undermines that with such balatant commercialisation it makes my blood (and most of my other bodily fluids come to think of it) boil.

Valentine’s day is supposed to be a day to celebrate love, but it should also be a day to celebrate different kinds of relationships. People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or asexual, transgender or who desire or are in an alternative relationship, may also struggle with the damned day either because they do not feel able to be open about their alternative sexualities, lifestyles or relationships; or that they want to be but know that this would lead to problems. 

For example, the only gay or lesbian couple in a restaurant full of straight couples on Valentine’s Day night might feel threatened – or even worse, be met with hostility and abuse from others.

And for a day that's meant to be about love, that makes it even more pathetic.

It's nothing more than a pathetic justification for people to scribble a message under a soppy verse written by a faceless employee in a mass-produced Chinese card factory, say it's "romantic," and figure that they've done their part for the year. Ice cream and teddy bear factories around the world must be rolling around in our grudgingly-given money, but as The Beatles famously sang; “Money Can't Buy You Love."

It’s no co-incidence that Valentines’ Day this year is directly preceded by the unluckiest, most dreaded, and most feared day of the year ... Friday the 13th.

If you ask me, they complement each other just perfectly.

PASSWORD PERPLEXTION

In days of old, when men were bold and sheep were very, very concerned, we're told that people had less leisure time because everything was a protracted pain in the fundament. Want to clean your smock ?? Then you'll have to walk six miles carrying a pail of water back from the village well. And that's before you've tackled the laundering process itself, which consists of three hours laboriously scrubbing your soiled garment against a washboard and wringing it through a mangle. By the time you've finished, it's bedtime. Did you remember to clean your pyjamas ?? No ?? Then it’s another trek back to the village well for you, then, son.

But in many ways, the rustic serf of yesteryear had a better quality of life than the modern man-about-town of the year 2015. Computers have freed us from hours of drudgery with one hand, but introduced an equal amount of slightly different drudgery with the other. These days it's commonplace to do everything online, from designing the layout of your kitchen to locating a stranger who can rearrange your furniture, or your face. Tasks that would have taken years to organise and achieve can now be accomplished in the blink of an icon …

… or they would be, if you could only remember your flippin’ password. Can't remember it ?? Is it because you chose it so very long, long ago - maybe two, three days before ?? In the intervening period you've had to dream up another six passwords for another six websites, programs, accounts and/or email addresses. In this age of rampant identity theft, where surely it's just a matter of time before someone works out a way to steal your reflection in the mirror and use it to commit benefit fraud in an alternate dimension, we're told only a complete and utter imbecile would use the same password for everything. Now you do, so in a sense, your identity's been stolen anyway. In the meantime, having demanded a new password for the 28th time this month, His Lordship Your Computer proceeds to snootily critique your efforts. Certain attempts shall be disqualified immediately, without even passing judgment. Less than six letters ?? No numbers ?? Access denied.

This is more complicated than trying to do long division on an upside-down Chinese calculator. Whilst blindfolded. There are more rules than the Formula One technical regulations manual. No recognisable words. No punctuation marks. No hesitation, deviation or repetition. Pass the qualifying round and it gets even worse. Most modern password entrance exams grade each entry as you type, presenting you with an instant one-word review of your efforts. Suppose you glance around your desk and pick the first thing you set eyes on, such as a child’s My Little Pony pen. You then begrudgingly shove a random number on the end.

You try out your hand-crafted digital key for the first time, typing it into the silicon lock. With a soft click, the mechanism turns. Access granted. Congratulations, you are now part of the smocklaundry.com community. Three weeks later your smocks are returned, late and still plastered with hideous stains. You revisit smocklaundry.com to protest. But you just can't remember that darned password. And in the intervening period you've had to dream up another 42 passwords for another 42 websites, programs, accounts and/or email addresses. Now you face the ignominy of clicking the password reset button for the 58,000th time this year. 

And so, you trudge dolefully toward your inbox, waiting for the dreaded help e-mail to arrive, the cruel laughter of His Computerised Majesty ringing in your ears, cackling manically like Davros.

You have failed, human. You have failed.

GENERAL IGNORANCE

Everybody generalises. Everything you say about people is a generalisation, unless it’s about a named individual and then it becomes gossip. Breakthroughs are made by scientists who ignore this rule and go for big general theories, such as relativity, leaving footnotes to others. It’s the same in real life. Glorious generalisers in search of broad truths are followed by legions of nit-pickers.

The ability to generalise is what separates mankind from the animals. We have big ideas of no relevance to the immediate search for our next meal. That’s why philosophers steer clear of supermarkets: it’s impossible to generalise when you’re grubbing for a copy of GQ and a packet of Smarties. Ants are a very successful species indeed because they ignore their individual needs and continually generalise about the greater good. You’ll notice that they have lots of worker ants but there’s no room for nit-picker ants or Health and Safety ants.

The more you generalise, the simpler things get. It’s impossible to generalise about something that makes the picture more confused, except for weather forecasting which attempts to give a detailed general picture. The highest order of generalisation simplifies everything into a featureless cosmic semolina similar to thinking nothing at all. A bit like being a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother", perhaps. These days, accusing someone of generalising is tantamount to calling them a liar. But generalisations are only so-called by people who don’t agree with them. Generalisations you really like feel like self-evident truths.

Interestingly, all generalisations start with an individual point of view. When you say that all Thursdays are rubbish, the manager of Aston Villa doesn’t seem to know a goal line from a clothes line and every single song in the singles charts these days sounds worse than listening to a tortoise breaking wind through a cheese grater, it’s based on your own personal experience.

Other people with similar experiences will agree with you, and even people who haven’t will begin to think that Thursdays aren’t so good. Eventually everyone will come to know and expect that Thursdays are the low point of the week. Speaking of which, it’s now impossible for the British to say “Have a nice day” without the long shadow of sarcasm passing over the conversation. In this country we presume that the day will be bad if we haven’t been savaged by a Bengal Tiger on the way home from work or if the bus didn’t suddenly veer off and nose-dive into a canal, whereas in America, nice days and the having thereof are written into the constitution.

You get really good days only about once a year. That’s when everything in life conspires to be in your favour. Some people worry so much that it will come to shuddering halt that they simply don’t know how to enjoy the day when it’s there. Just accept that, sometimes, it really is your day. Caution is shrink-wrapped fear. The quickest way to do yourself a mischief on an escalator is to be too cautious. It’s the same in life generally, although with life you don’t have to carry dogs and stand to the right. Caution is what happens when you follow your liver instead of your heart. It’s a non-stick emotional surface for the bad things that life throws at you.

Nice days are ones that make happy memories. One nice day can extinguish the memory of 13 bad ones, which is handy because this is normally the ratio you get on two weeks’ holiday with the family. It’s also the day you forget the batteries and spare memory card for your camera. Nice days can happen spontaneously. You get out of bed on the right side, with a spring in your step and a song in your heart. You may even come up with a way to save the world.

That’s how big ideas get started, generally speaking.